The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [111]
Catcher freezes, his breath held as if he isn’t sure he heard me correctly.
I pause, a bit uncertain about how to voice my thoughts. “The other night I was on the roof and I made a balloon out of a cloth bag and hot air from the fire. I was thinking about balloons from the before time—pictures I saw in a museum when I was a child—and I wondered if I could make it work. I think …”
I walk over to stand next to him by the window, staring at the darkness outside. “I think we could make them big enough to carry us off the island. It could be really dangerous and stupid but …” I look up at him, at the hope in his eyes. “But I think it might be worth the risk.”
Reaching out, I trace the shape of a balloon where my breath fogs the window. “We’ll need more supplies.” I draw the lines, the basket, a cauldron for the fire. “We can seal the seams with fat or oil. We need ropes and wires and light wood to make the basket. Something big to hold the fire.”
I look around the room, trying to take stock of what we already have. “Some of this stuff we can scrounge up here, but you might need to get the rest in the Dark City. And you have to tell the people over there how to make their own so they have a shot at escape as well. We’ll have to hurry.”
He stares at my crude diagram. “I can’t leave the three of you alone again. Not so soon with the Recruiters and Ox. Not after what I did to Conall. They’re going to want some kind of revenge.”
I thread my fingers through his. “You’re never going to be able to be here all the time,” I tell him. “Someone’s always going to need you somewhere else. There’s nothing either of us can do about it. You’re not a person who can ignore other people’s pain. I wouldn’t want you to be.”
“You don’t understand, Annah.” He grips me so tightly I can feel the tips of his fingers imprinting my skin. “I almost lost you.” He kneels, wrapping his arms around me. “I walked into the auditorium and I saw you in that cage and I died. All that blood—I thought you were infected.”
He looks up at me. “At that moment I realized I’d made the biggest mistake in my life. I realized that I’m nothing without you. That there’s no point in being alive if I can’t love you.”
I catch my breath but he’s not finished. “I love you, Annah. And if you’re willing to risk everything to be with me, then I’m willing to risk everything to be with you. I’m going to keep fighting for you, every day of my life. If you’ll have me.”
I sink to my knees until our foreheads are touching. Amazed at how in this tiny little room in this corner of a dark and forgotten world I can feel so alive.
“Yes,” I whisper against his lips. I kiss him and he kisses me back, fully and wholly and without reservation.
And for a moment there’s no death in the world, no pain or infection or despair. There’s only us and life and something between us so impossibly pure that it consumes us both.
Just as we feared, there’s a knock on the door that night as I’m helping my sister drink another cup of the herb tea. Already color flushes her cheeks and she’s able to stay awake for small stretches of time. She’s still weak—they both are—but they’re not on the edge of death any longer.
Someone pounds on the door again, insistent. Elias struggles to push himself from the bed but I nudge him back down under the quilts. “Catcher’s here, he’ll take care of it,” I tell him but he frowns, clearly wanting to stand between us and them—to protect us.
I tiptoe into the hallway, my back pressed against the wall so that I can watch as Catcher opens the door, machete clutched in his hand. Ox stands on the threshold, alone, and my entire body tenses.
That voice—the casual impassive tone. That allowed a man to hit me. That ordered me to be thrown over the wall. That told me my childhood village no longer existed. I ball up my hands in useless rage, wishing I could storm down the hall and punch him but knowing he’d only strike me to the ground.
“The men aren’t happy about what you did, Catcher,” Ox says. “Conall